Escape
by MistehRain
Summary: Luna was that girl that everyone that everyone hated just because she was different. AU rated for death two-shot


I loved to paint. It was a way I could express myself without anyone thinking I was a total freak. Art was normal. It was about the only normal thing I did and no one teased me when I did something normal.

However, they did harass me when I did the things they thought were weird, but I had grown up thinking was perfectly fine. People threw insults and curses and punches at me for reading my daddy's magazine, for wearing my cork necklace and radish earrings, for talking to my only friends – Neville Longbottom, Hermione Granger, Ronald and Ginevra Weasley, and the famous Harry Potter – about the dangers of nargles. But their tauntings, magical attacks, and beatings were the worst if I looked at a girl the wrong way.

It wasn't a secret that I was gay, but no one really understood that it wasn't something I could help. I knew I liked girls since I was young and my father had loved me even more because of it. He and my friends were that only ones that accepted me for my lesbianism. Everyone else just beat the crap out of me for it.

Sure, Harry, Neville, Ginny, Hermione, and Ron tried to protect me, but Neville wasn't exactly the brave type and they couldn't always be there for me. They were brave Gryffindors and four of them didn't even have a single class with me. I was the little abnormal Ravenclaw that only had her witty words, no strength to fend off the bullies and my wand was usually spelled out of my robes before I had the time to even reach for it.

So, I'd charm my body free of the obvious marks of abuse and go to my dorm to paint after a particularly bad attack. Painting was my way out. When I painted, I could pretend that the emotional and physical pain I always kept off my face with that spacey, glass-eyed look wasn't real. That I was a normal girl and I was popular and everyone loved me. I could pretend whatever I wanted when I painted and no one could tell me I was a freak in that world. That world was where no one could hurt me.

But, my little fantasy world never lasted. I was always pulled back into the miserable life I lived, being beaten and cursed and threatened at least once a day, where people could hurt me whenever I pleased.

That was how it happened on this particular afternoon. A team of those awful Slytherins had jumped me on my way to Transfiguration with the Gryffindors. I had only heard them coming a second before they were on me, so I was an easy take-down and just curled up in a ball on the deserted hallway floor while I was kicked, punched, _beaten_. I never understood what had provoked them this time. Then again, I didn't have much time to think about it. Perhaps they'd seen me gazing at that beautiful Hufflepuff at lunch, or maybe they'd noticed it was actually the Quibbler I was reading in History of Magic, the magazine hidden by my textbook. Either way, not much would have stopped them so I didn't try.

When they finally got tired and left for their next class, I could see my own scarlet liquid on the gray cement floor. I just laid there for a while until the sound of a distant army of footsteps made me slowly stand up, scourgify the floor, and make my way back to the Ravenclaw dormitories before anyone could see me. My head was spinning, but I somehow made it to the safety of my paints without passing out.

So, I went into my artistic trance. When I came out of it, I saw Ginny staring worriedly at me from the doorway.

It took me a second to figure out why she was looking at me like that before I realized I'd forgotten to spell myself free of the blood and cuts and bruises. "You said they weren't doing it as much or as bad now, Luna," was the only thing she said before coming to sit by me on the bed so she could clean me and hide the marks herself.

"I didn't want you to worry." She already knew why I'd done it, but I needed to clarify just in case. And I just let the tears fall while she cleaned me up because I didn't have to pretend around my friends. They wouldn't scrutinize me for showing emotion.

That was just how life was for the last four years before I died.

How I'd wished for the days I'd had just with my father, where I could be myself.

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><p>Please R&amp;R if you like it and want the second part :3<p> 


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